"Our objective each time is to not lose a single person. Is it realistic? Not in warfare. But one is too many." - Col. Tony Carrelli

Col. Tony Carrelli spent the better part of a decade flying A-10s over Iraq and Afghanistan. He took part in the first wave of the U.S.-led mission to oust the former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, then served as part of the protracted multi-national mission to fight insurgency in that country.

“To anyone of those families one is too many. You give me a number, is 10 too many? 100 too many? 1,000, 5,000? To an American family out there, if that one was your one, that one is too many”

Of the 34,000 Pennsylvania National Guard deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, 39 troops have been killed in action - 29 of them in Iraq.

Pennsylvania’s National Guard has lost more men and women in combat in the past 10 years than any other state’s guard unit, a statistic underscored by the fact that Pennsylvania’s military arm is predominantly combat trained.

“That’s not a statistic we are proud of but when we were asked to be there and serve, we were there,” Carrelli said.

“One is too many,” Carrelli said. “Our objective each time is to not lose a single person. Is it realistic? Not in warfare. But one is too many. To those of us in uniform, we know we have faith in the elected officials and our country that, hey, if you are going to use us in that manner, it’s important, and we are going to do the best we can. That’s how the system works. That’s why it’s the best country in the world.”

Carrelli doesn’t downplay the dangers of combat and warfare; rather he considers them risks inherent to a military career.

An A-10 pilot, Carrelli, 49, refueled his jet countless of times, approaching the hulking refueling station - a KC-135 Stratotanker - at closure speeds approaching 800 miles per hour. Last year, he traded cockpits and flew the KC-135, instead.

Carrelli said negotiating either the A-10 or a KC-135 aircraft loaded with high-octane jet fuel puts courage and confidence in perspective.

“The KC-135 is a flying gas station,” he said. “You look at that, inherently that’s extremely dangerous on the surface. Someone else would say that’s absolutely dangerous. No, it’s not. I could do that in my sleep. Your approach to war in most respects is the same. You’ve trained for this all your life. You’ve gone through every one of these scenarios. Everything that I’m doing out there, I’ve done on the practice range a thousand times, just not with people shooting at me.”

Carrelli joined the Air Force out of high school and studied at the Air Force Academy. The south Jersey native became a pilot in 1985 and spent half of his aviation career on active duty. In 1999, he joined the Pennsylvania Air National Guard flying A-10's for the 111th Fighter Wing in Horsham. In 2012, he moved to Pittsburgh to serve as commander of the 171st Air Refueling Wing flying the KC-135 and in 2013 moved to his current position at Fort Indiantown Gap.

Carrelli was part of the U.S. mission in the Middle East long before the onset of the war with Iraq. In 2001, he was in Kuwait and part of support operations into Afghanistan. The following year, he was flying missions over Afghanistan and in 2003 into Iraq. He returned to Iraq in 2007 as part of the continuing Iraqi Freedom mission.

In January of 2003, just as the Iraq War was about to begin, he had just arrived home from Afghanistan. Two weeks after returning his unit was asked to deploy once again. By the end of February volunteers from the 111th had re-deployed and were in place for the beginning of Iraqi Freedom.

“That was my view of what I saw,” Carrelli said. “Now did everybody see the same thing? No. I was highly trained. I was in a cockpit that I had been in my whole life. Is it the same for an 18-year-old kid walking down a town going street by street, door to door, RPGs flying? I could not speak to that. I’ve not seen this myself. That scares me. But I know there’s plenty of people who see what I do and say I’m crazy.”

Carrelli said he doesn’t look at the 10-year anniversary nor the U.S. plan to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014 as the end of the war.

But he considers the accomplishments significant - predominantly that of the toppling of Hussein and one of the world’s largest and most threatening militaries.

“We gave them the chance to be a prosperous democracy,” Carrelli said. “Is it going to flourish there? I don’t know. I think it’s too early to say. But we gave them the chance.

Still, Carrelli, a married father of two daughters, knows that as someone who wears a military uniform, his job is to follow orders - not ask why he should nor will it result in the best outcome.

The military will continue for years to deal with the aftermath of the war, not only looking after the families of fallen soldiers, but tending to those who returned with visible and invisible injuries, he said.

But he counts himself lucky to be serving at a time when the nation has rallied behind its servicemen and women.

“It’s a rare occasion that I walk around anywhere and civilians don’t come up to you and thank you for your service,” Carrelli said. “That goes a long way to the acceptance in the community. You talk to Vietnam Vets when they returned they didn’t have that. These are all things that help move that in a positive direction.”

The Pennsylvania National Air Guard currently has 132 personnel deployed to Southwest Asia. The Army side has 2,000 soldiers deployed, 1,500 of them in Kuwait with the 55th Heavy Brigade Combat Team based out of Scranton.

People evacuate the body of a car bomb victim following an attack near the municipal building in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City, Baghdad, Iraq, Tuesday, March 19, 2013. A wave of apparently coordinated bombings rumbled across the Iraqi capital Tuesday morning, killing and wounding scores of people, police said. (AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

“This is a different kind of war,” he said. “Go to War World II. Both sides fought until they surrendered Then there was a ceasefire and then it was done and everything stopped and we took all our stuff home and it was over. If you look at how Iraq ended I would anticipate Afghanistan probably will be about the same. It’s an insurgency fight. If we say we are going to leave do you think they are not going to attack us anymore we are just going to walk away? We have to remain vigilant until the end...that’s the nature of warfare over there.”

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